Here & Now

Banning No-Knock Warrants in Milwaukee

Frederica Freyberg:

In Milwaukee, is it a new day for the police department there? There is a new chief of police in Milwaukee and new rules. In the last year, the city’s police and fire commission banned the use of police chokeholds and no-knock warrants and required community-oriented policing. Take the stats on no-knock warrants in Milwaukee. Their numbers have gone from 72% of warrants being executed in 2019 to just 2% last year. That’s a measurable difference. The city also has a new chair of the Police and Fire Commission. He’s Marquette University Law Professor Ed Fallone. He joins us now and thanks very much for being here.

Ed Fallone:

Always happy to see you, Frederica.

Frederica Freyberg:

In a recent interview, you are quoted as saying that we have instituted the guardian model of policing versus the old warrior model. How do these models differ?

Ed Fallone:

Well, this policy comes from our Police Chief Jeff Norman, and it’s about collaboration with the community, outreach to the community, and improving public safety by forming partnerships with the community. And so that views police officers as guardians of the community. And I think we have a history, a recent history in this country of a different philosophy, and that’s the warrior mentality, that the police are out there to confront the bad guys, and that the public sometimes gets caught in the interactions. And that sometimes the police have viewed the public with suspicion. So it’s a huge contrast, and we think we are moving forward in the right direction under Police Chief Norman.

Frederica Freyberg:

So we’ve shown the number of no-knock warrants being reduced to just 2% in 2021. What have been the effects of that on the ability to capture suspects and solve crime in the city?

Ed Fallone:

Well, we’ve had a concerted effort to reduce the number of no-knock warrants, and as you indicated with your statistics, the exception had become the rule. 70% of the warrants served have been no-knock. No-knocks were intended to be the exception and to be used in extreme circumstances to recover evidence of crime or to obtain a suspect when there was no other way to do so. And so under Chief Norman, we had a year-long process of examining the procedures, and successive reduction every year of the number of no-knock warrants executed in Milwaukee until the chief got it down to just six in the year 2021. And at that stage, the Fire and Police Commission interacted with the police and said, we want facts, what were the scenarios where these six were executed, and is it possible to get from six to zero? And after that year-long process, the commission decided, yes, we would ban the police department in Milwaukee from using no-knocks. When you’re down to that small a level, less than 2% of all warrants executed, at that stage, the ban is not going to have any further impact on policing.

Frederica Freyberg:

What about officer safety, because I know the police union worries now that its officers can’t surprise suspects and are put in greater danger.

Ed Fallone:

Well, we’re very concerned about officer safety. And really, in this entire process of examining no-knock warrants, it was a matter of weighing risk to the safety of officers versus risk to the public. And there’s no way to get to zero risk on either side of that equation. And I think what your viewers should understand is that in Milwaukee, we have high-density residential neighborhoods, high multi-family situations inside even detached homes, we have residential properties with multiple units in them, and so any time there’s a serving of a no-knock warrant, there’s a lot of people nearby, a lot of innocent people, next door neighbors or even in the same building. And so we’re trying to reduce the risk to officers, but we’re also trying to reduce the risk to other residents nearby, if violence breaks out. And there’s no way to get to zero on either equation, and so we felt ultimately that the no-knocks created an unacceptable level of risk.

Frederica Freyberg:

The state Senate this week passed a measure to prohibit cities from banning no-knock warrants. What’s your response to that?

Ed Fallone:

Well, I think it’s a mistake to try and set policing policy from Madison for the entire state, and to have representatives of smaller communities in our state try to dictate the policing strategies and tactics in our larger urban areas. I want to re-emphasize that the effort to reduce the incidence of no-knock warrants in Milwaukee began with our police chief, who is very concerned about rebuilding community trust, rebuilding community relationships after several years, where quite frankly witnesses stopped cooperating with the police. And informants stopped calling the police. And it became more difficult to close open cases. And step one in changing that is rebuilding trust. And so really, this is part of that philosophy of re-establishing a closer collaborative relationship between residents and the police and reducing crime. It works for our city, and it’s, I think, better to leave this to local control.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We leave it there, Ed Fallone, thanks very much for talking with us about this.

Ed Fallone:

It’s been a pleasure, Frederica. Thank you.